


Twitter-Pated

by DoneInLove



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Drug Use, Eventual Smut, Lots of sex jokes, M/M, Memes, Sex Jokes, Twitter, Underage Drinking, basically all the normal pairings/trios have been split up, dumb college kids, non-traditional friendship groups, school rivalry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 00:13:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3670239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoneInLove/pseuds/DoneInLove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean and Eren go to Universities who are bitter rivals. They both hate their own schools though, and have created their own parody twitter accounts for their schools’ mascots to make fun of them. But the only thing they hate more than their own school is each others’. </p><p>ie., when Jean and Eren use memes to battle over twitter</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> So someone at the University I go to has created a parody twitter account of our mascot along the same lines as the (sort of old) Spoderman meme (but way less offensive) that has gotten pretty well known around campus. Now, my school also has a bitter rival school a few towns over. And me, one sleep deprived and coffee filled day, thought about what if our rival school had their own account and battled ours in twitter wars. Which spiraled into Eren and Jean running their own parody accounts of their schools, finding each others' accounts, and beginning this all out war with each other. So naturally, I had to create that universe and write about it. Because I am trash. Enjoy.
> 
> The Original Spoderman (be warned, this guy is pretty offensive in a lot of his tweets): https://twitter.com/spodermanpls  
> My School's Parody Mascot: https://twitter.com/amzoopy
> 
> Now check out the photoset for this story over on Tumblr! (Also follow me if you want to descend into my trash-heap)  
> http://smollminyyard.tumblr.com/post/143605287569/okay-seriously-you-are-being-a-massive-fuckhead

“Oh my god I’m going to die. I’m so sweaty and hungry and tired and we’ve lifted so many heavy things today and my muscles are sore and heavens above this recliner is the most comfortable thing I’ve felt in ages I’m so in love with it right now.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I took the sandal off of my sister’s foot, ignoring her icy glare, and chucked it across the room, hitting my target square on her forehead. “Shut your bitch mouth Sasha.”

That got me a slap on the back of my head from Mikasa. “What the fuck, Eren? Why did you have to take my sandal off to throw?” 

“She needed to stop complaining but I’m nice enough to not throw a fucking boot at her head,” I answered, gesturing to the clunky combat boots on my feet. 

“Well who said you had to throw anything at me, you giant turd?” Sasha grumbled, crossing her arms and sinking even lower into her recliner. 

“Because you wouldn’t shut the hell up. We’re all tired and hungry. That’s why we’re taking a break and why we ordered pizza, dumbass.” Okay, maybe I was being a bit harsh on her, but no one could say that I was wrong. 

“Come on guys,” Marco groaned. He was sprawled out in the middle of our new living room floor, his face buried in the crook of his arm. “Especially you Eren. We just moved in. We have to live together for an entire year. If you can’t freaking get along now, I’m finding new roommates.”

The couch shook from Mikasa’s laughter. “Well, you best start looking Marco. You know damn well Eren will start fights with anyone, for any reason.” My whole body stiffened involuntarily and my head snapped in her direction. 

“What the fuck Mikasa? You sure are a supportive sister here, damn.”

I heard a mixture between a groan and a chuckled come from the middle of the floor and turned back to Marco. “Point taken.” Fuck, Mikasa was right. “Maybe I’ll transfer to Trost and move in with Ymir and Krista.”

I couldn’t help but groan. “I get that Shig’s art program sucks ass, but I don’t know how your cousin puts up with those pretentious assholes in Trost.”

“And I know you have a huge ego and even bigger need for power and conflict,” he quipped instantly, snapping his head towards me. “But I still don’t get the point behind this stupid fucking school rivalry bullshit and why it means so damn much to you. You don’t even like sports. You only pay attention to them because of the stupid Twitter account of yours.”

“Hey, people love Scoot. Don’t be dissing on Scoot.”

His words were slightly muffled as he plopped his head back into his arms. “I don’t know what kind of people love these stupids accounts, because I think they’re the dumbest things since that fucking ‘doge’ meme.” 

By this point, if I were paying any attention to my other roommates, which I really wasn’t, I would have seen that Mikasa had completely given up and had pulled out her phone to distract herself, and that Sasha was about halfway to being asleep. But I was somehow gaining a second wind for the day, now that an argument was about to be forged. 

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘those accounts’? I only know about Scoot and the original Spoderman meme.”

“You really think you’re the only one inspired by that stupid Spoderman crap? Lots of people run these kinds of accounts. There’s even one for Trost. You’re not as original as you think you are Eren.”

I damn near jumped out of my seat. “The fuck?! Those dickweeds at Trost have one? What’s it called? Do you know the Twitter handle? Do you know who runs it? What do you know, Marco? What do you know?” 

Marco groaned again. “God, I really hate you sometimes.”

“Oh, come on Marco,” I half-whined, slithering my way off the couch and down next to him. He started squirming the second I began pushing on his sides, and I could tell he was trying his hardest not to laugh.

“Get off me, you heathen! Stop tickling me!”

“Jesus, I didn’t realize you were so ticklish on your sides,”

“Then fucking stop tickling me!”

 

Normally, I would have been a nice friend and obliged, but I saw my in and I couldn’t help but take it. “Tell me about the Trost account,” I threatened, upping my tickling intensity. I almost felt bad about how much he looked like he was in pain, but I knew he wasn’t, so I stopped my burgeoning remorse. 

“Christ, let me up and I will!” he shrieked. I sat back on my heels and smirked as I made a show of folding my hands in my lap Marco sat up, chest heaving as he tried to catch him breath. “You are literally the worst friend ever and I don’t know why I ever thought it would be a good idea to live with you.”

“Oh, don’t get your pickle in a tickle Marcy-Marc. You know this year’s gonna be fun,” Sasha half-mumbled, earning very odd looks from both me and Marco. HOw she could come up with such ridiculous phrases and terrible nicknames while half asleep was beyond me. 

“I hate you too Sasha.”

“Anyways, if you don’t tell me all you know about this supposed Trost account in the next ten seconds, I will start tickling you again.”

“I still don’t know why this is such a big deal for you, but I only know the name of it anyways. I have no clue who runs it.”

“Then what’s the name?!” I yelled, it coming out much louder than I wanted it to. I was apparently loud enough to make Sasha jump in her chair and yell back. 

“Jesus!”

“God, you’re ridiculous,” Marco sighed, shaking his head and standing up. “It’s called Tooler the Tootan. And it’s a fairly new account. But that’s all I know, so if you ask for anything else I will knock you out.”

I scrambled to my feet and almost pushed him back down with the force of my hug. “You’re the best friend a guy could have, Marco. Love you bro!” I let go of him, grinning from ear to ear, before sitting back down on the couch and pulling my phone out of my pocket to find this Trost fool on twitter. 

I wasn’t exactly paying attention, but I could have sworn I heard Marco call me a ‘fucking psycho’ under his breath. Of course, the doorbell rang at that exact moment anyways, so I couldn’t be completely sure.

I quirked an eyebrow and asked, “Wait, what did you just say?”

“I said, ‘finally, food’s here’,” he said with a shrug, starting towards the front door. I felt the couch shift and saw a flash out of the corner of my eye as Mikasa launched herself past Marco. I momentarily gave up on my search for Tooler the Tootan because I couldn’t figure out why my sister was acting so weird. When she swung the door open, I realized why. Standing on our new front porch was a glaring Annie, who must have told Mikasa she was coming, clad in her horrendous Papa John’s uniform and holding a pizza bag. 

She and Mikasa have been growing a lot closer recently and she might have been the only person Annie fully trusted, other than her childhood friend Bertholt. Annie and Bert were always a lot more closed off than the rest of us, but we’ve all known each other for a few years now, so they’ve started warming up to us a lot more and spend a lot more time with us than they had before. 

In fact, Annie’s glare turned almost instantly into a smile while she saw Mikasa and Marco standing in front of her. Mikasa leaned against the doorframe in almost a sensual manner and winked at Annie. “Oh no...it seems I’ve misplaced my wallet. Just however am I going to pay you for all this now?” she asked dramatically, one eyebrow cocked. “I guess you’ll just have to come in and we can figure out what I can do to repay you…”

If there was any annoyance left of Annie’s face after the door opened, it was absolutely gone by the time Mikasa was done speaking. She was laughing and rubbing her face with her free hand to try to steady herself. “You’re a fucking dork, Mika. But I’m guessing this is your new place?”

“Yeah, just moving in now. Thought we’d christen it with the first dose of shitty food for the year.”

“Excuse you!” I yelled out. “Papa John’s is amazing!”

“It’s pizza, dumbass. It’s shitty by nature.”

Eh. I couldn’t fight her there. 

Annie chuckled as she starting unpacking the two large pizzas and box of brownies from her bag. “Well, as much as I’d love you stay and break the place in with you guys, I do have more deliveries to take. So, if someone actually has some money for me…” she trailed off, smirking at Mikasa, who in turn snapped her fingers at Marco. 

“Pay the woman, Marco. You make the most out of all of us here. Oh, and don’t forget a tip!”

He scoffed, a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth “Yeah, like you have to tell me that.” Marco pulled his wallet out of his pocket as Mikasa grabbed the boxes from Annie’s hands and brought them into the living room. The smell woke Sasha immediately and she scrambled out of her chair to pry one of the boxes out of Mikasa’s hands. 

“Christ, I feel like I could eat this whole thing.”

“Do that and die,” Mikasa growled, stopping Sasha’s movements instantly. “We only got two larges, and there are four of us, so you can only have half a pizza at maximum. Take any more and I’ll punch you in the throat.”

Sasha’s eyes were huge by that point and she slowly nodded in understanding. 

“Bye everyone!” Annie called from the foyer.

Sasha’s head snapped that direction. “Oh, Annie’s here? Hi Annie!”

“Annie’s leaving! Annie has to earn a living!” she yelled our way, half-chuckling. “Maybe Annie will come back later to hang out!”

“You better, woman!” Mikasa shouted. 

“BYE!” The door slammed and Marco walked back into the living room. 

“I’m friends with a bunch of idiots,” he muttered, plopping himself back down on the floor and reaching for a slice of pizza. He took a big bite and didn’t bother waiting until he was done chewing before asking, “Remind me again why I thought living with any of you lot would be a good idea?”

“We may be idiots, but you’re a straight up pig,” Mikasa countered. “What? No one ever taught you how to swallow your food before talking?”

 

“Eren would know all about swallowing, huh?”

“Hey!”

“Marco, you cheeky little bastard,” Sasha said, giggling. He grinned back at her, pizza still slightly visible in his mouth. I reach out my leg and kicked him in the knee.

“What do you know about my sex life?”

“I know that I was making a joke out of nothing, and now your reaction tells me all I needed to know.” The smug bastard was grinning his face off, and even Mikasa was trying not to laugh through her bite of pizza. 

“Hey Eren, my pizza has sausage on it. You sure you don’t wanna share?” Sasha asked, laughing through her entire sentence. I just glared.

“So it that what happened the night of the beach party when you disappeared for two hours?” Marco questioned, referring to our end of the summer tradition of having a small party on a beach about three hours away from campus. 

“Fuck you, I got lost. And if I remember correctly, you had your tongue down Thomas’ throat that entire night.”

“Irrelevant,” Marco shrugged, waving his half eaten piece of pizza in the air for an added effect. “You getting lost, however, is likely a cover up for getting ‘lost’ in some guy’s crotch, I bet.” He snickered when he air-quoted ‘lost’, which caused Sasha to howl with laughter and my own sister to let out a snort.”

“God, seriously, why am I being attacked with dick jokes tonight? It’s not like I’m the only one here who likes guys. Actually, literally all of you like dick. Why am I the only one being roasted here?”

Marco snorted as well and fell onto his back laughing. “Oh, I could make a couple good jokes out of that one. You’re making this too easy bro.”

“You brought this on yourself, Eren,” Mikasa chuckled, patting my shoulder. “You were being kind of a -” she snorted again. “Kind of a dick earlier.”

“Fucking hell, maybe I’ll move to Trost. I don’t know if I can live with you assholes,” I grumbled, taking an angry bite out of my pizza. 

“Who are you kidding, Eren? You love assholes.”

“I hate you,” I deadpanned, just about to give up and retreat to my room.

“Oh, come on you big baby.” Mikasa elbowed me. “What? You can dish it out but you can’t take it? Oh wait, no, you take it all the time, don’t you?”

Marco snickered. Again. What a dick.

I glared at my sister and whispered as menacingly as possible, “Traitor.”

“So speaking of dicks,” Marco started, grinning. 

I groaned. “Oh Christ.”

“Have you found the guy that runs the Tooler account? That’s all you cared about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Oh damn. I forgot all about that actually. You guys were too busy busting my -” I stopped that train of thought just late enough to regret it. My eyes grew as all three of my so-called ‘friends’ started laughing again. “Fuck…”

“No, no, I’m done,” Marco promised, trying to catch his breath and stop his laughter. “I don’t think my face will let me laugh anymore. It hurts too much right now.”

“Yeah, it’s hurting me a lot right now too,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. 

“Whatever, you baby. So are you gonna look this guy up or not? Now you’ve even got me curious about how this will turn out.” Marco was talking while chewing again, so I was lucky I could even make out what he was saying. 

“Oh, so you’re not going to tell me I’m a fucking psycho again? Wow, look at you Marco. Turning a new leaf, huh?” He stopped chewing and stared at me, eyes wide. “Oh yeah, I thought that’s what you said earlier. Good to know I’m not as oblivious as you might think, ain’t it?”

“I, uh, I -” Marco stuttered, apparently trying to save his own ass. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. How do you spell that account name though? I don’t think I was putting it in right before. I couldn’t find it,” I half mumbled as my attention was caught by me pulling my phone out and opening up twitter again. 

“Oh, uh, I think it’s t-o-o-l-e-r the t-o-o-t-a-n. It should come up when you search th-”

“Ah-HAH!” I yelled, far too excited for my own good. “Found the little bastard.” Out of the corner of my eyes, I could see both Marco and Mikasa shaking their heads at me, and if I knew my sister at all, then she was probably also rolling her eyes. “Whatever, haters. I’ve got to go engage this guy in some good old fashion twitter warfare. So if you’ll all excuse me,” I paused, picking myself up off the couch and grabbing another two slices of pizza before turning towards the hallway our rooms were down. “I have business to attend to. I’ll inform you of the details as they emerge.”

Marco laughed and waved me off. “Whatever, weirdo.”

“Have fun with your new boyfriend!” Sasha yelled after me. Their laughter rang down the hall as I walked and all I could do was groan. My friends are the worst. But also kind of the best.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Four million years later, and here's chapter 2. Years better than chapter one, on top of it all.

“Connie, where did you put the first aid kit yesterday?” I called out down the hall, my head sticking out of the bathroom. I’d heard him rustling around in the kitchen not even five minutes before, so I knew he should have at least been able to hear my calling for him. I waited almost a full minute for a response, but didn’t hear a thing. “Connie?” 

I heard the faint echo of an explosion, followed by a scream of frustration from exactly the person I was looking for. I chuckled and shook my head, walking towards the living room. Connie was sitting on the very edge of the couch, crouched over a game controller, muttering a stream of profanities as he apparently started losing pretty hardcore at whatever game he was playing. Some odd concoction of ramen noodles and god only knew what else was on the table in front of him, chopsticks sticking out of the bowl and noodles falling onto the table. I shook my head again and waved my hand in front of his face. He flinched, paused his game, and looked up at me with a quirked eyebrow. 

“Earth to dipshit, can you even hear me over your massive failure?”

“Were you trying to talk to me?”

“I called for you twice dude.”

 

He shrugged. “Huh. Must have really been into the game, I guess. What did you need?”

I rolled my eyes. “Where did you put the first aid kit when you were unpacking the bathroom stuff yesterday? I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Why? Did you hurt yourself?” He suddenly looked way more concerned than I’d seen him for a while. “Are you okay man? What did you do? You look fine.”

“Whoa, dude shut up. I’m fine,” I said, holding my hands out in a halting gesture. “I’m packing it for tomorrow. Last year multiple people fell and skinned knees or screwed their hands all up or whatever else, and no one in the section had anything for it, so we had to go ask the damn clarinets for help like every time. I’m being prepared this year, just in case we’re a section full of clumsy assholes again.”

“Did no one all of last year think to start bringing a first aid kit after the first or second time someone hurt themselves? That seems like the logical thing to do if it kept happening,” he said, smirking slightly. 

“Yeah, that would have made too much sense. I think the most anyone ever started bringing was a pack of bandaids. That’s why I want to be more prepared this year. So where did you put it?”

“Put what?” 

I half groaned, half laughed. “The first aid kit, asshat.”

“Ohh, right,” Connie nodded slowly. “Should be under the sink. Just like it was last year in the dorm.”

“I didn’t see it there. Are you sure you put it there?”

Connie scrunched up his eyebrows and stuck the tip of his tongue out of his mouth in thought. Before he could answer, the front door opened and in came a tired looking Armin Arlert, our other roommate. He sighed as he shoved his keys in his pocket and kicked off his shoes. Dragging his feet the entire way, he joined us in the living room and dropped himself unceremoniously into one of our big comfy chairs. He propped his feet up on the coffee table and groaned. 

Connie and I looked at each other and back to Armin, smirks on both of our faces. “Tough first day back at Beans?” I offered, trying not to laugh at our obviously worn out friend. 

He groaned one more time for good measure and rubbed his hands across his face. “The semester hasn’t even started yet. This is a fraking college town. Why in the world would there be _that_ many people there today? It just doesn’t add up, guys. It just doesn’t add up…”

“Wow Jean, he said ‘fraking’. It must really have been busy,” Connie said, chuckling as he picked his bowl of ramen back up. He had a point though. Arming never cursed, no matter how upset he was, and would say something like ‘fudge’ in place of ‘fuck’. But when he was really annoyed or upset, he would use words really close to being curse words, like his use of ‘fraking’ instead of ‘fucking’. It was all more out of habit more than anything else, since his Grandfather was always strict about cursing when he was growing up, and it was starting to seep into all of his friends’ speech patterns too, which was hilarious, I thought. 

“It waaass. Oh my gosh guys it was literally the worst. There were only two of us scheduled because it wasn’t supposed to be anything near busy. There’s over a week before anyone should even be coming back, but I swear every single person that’s back in this town already was at Beans today. We should have had at least two more people working today. I almost burnt myself, like, five times within the last hour I was there because I was so stressed and tired. I’ve never hated being a barista so much before, but today was a straight up mess.”

“Not gonna lie,” I started slowly. “I almost came down today for my usual.” 

“And I’m not going to lie; I might have thrown something very hot in your face if you had.”

I nodded, eyes wide. “Oh-kay. Glad I didn’t then.” 

“I don’t think I can smell coffee again for a week without getting war flashbacks.”

“Good thing you’ve gotta work all week then, ain’t it?” Connie supplied sarcastically. 

Armin’s noise of the day was apparently groaning, as he did such again. “I’m so jealous of you guys this week. You get to go have all kinds of fun at band camp.”

“You make it sound like we’re going away to some luxurious resort for a week where we won’t be basically working out for twelve hours a day,” Connie laughed, a noodle half hanging out of his mouth. He slurped it back up and put his bowl back down on the table. “You were in marching band in high school. You know it’s not all rainbows and sunshine.”

“Oh goodness, Connie, I was only joking. I only meant that I’m going to be dealing with far too many salty customers and you guys will be doing something that you enjoy. You two will also almost certainly be much more worn out by the end of the week than I will be. But you’ll probably still have more fun than I will.” 

“Well we can always come visit you during our lunch and dinner breaks. Bring some of our excitement into your life,” I offered, shrugging. 

“If you come in and we’re slammed, I _will_ throw something at you from the hot bar,” he warned, his voice low and slightly threatening. 

“Oh, so I shouldn’t bring the entire Mellophone section in at the same time then?”

Armin glared at me. “The only way I won’t inflict bodily harm on you for doing that is if everyone tips me well. There’s, what, fifteen of you guys? Each of you give me at least two bucks extra and I’ll get over it.”

I pursed my lips and hummed in thought. “Yeah, I could probably swing that. That would actually be a pretty good section bonding experience for us all. We usually all eat lunch and dinner together anyways.”

“Oh goodness gracious. What have I gotten myself into?” Armin sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Just please tell me when you plan on doing this. Give me as much notice as possible, please.”

“Christ. I wouldn’t just spring fifteen people on you without giving you any notice. I’m not that evil,” I said, chuckling.

“Yeah,” Connie snorted. “Right. Mr. Puts Hot Sauce In My Coffee over here isn’t that evil.”

“Hey, that was only a prank. That doesn’t count,” I argued, hands on my hips defensively. It occurred to me then just how long I’d been standing there, but I still had a lot more to get together for the next day, so I wasn’t about to sit down just to get back up a minute later. “Plus, you laughed your ass off at that. You can’t be mad at me now if you thought it was funny when I did it. That’s like the opposite of how that normally works.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he laughed, waving me off. 

“So back to our original conversation anyways…” I trailed off, cocking an eyebrow at Connie. “The first aid kit is not in the bathroom. Where else might you have put it?”

 

“It’s under the sink in the kitchen,” Armin answered instead, his eyes still closed. “I saw it there this morning.”

“Ohh, right. I totally forgot I put it there when I moved some of the cleaning supplies from the bathroom to the kitchen.” 

“Dunce,” I muttered, shaking my head. I walked into the kitchen and opened the cabinet under the sink. Sitting right in front was the thing I’d spent far too much of my time looking for that day. I sighed and snatched it up, half-sulking back down the hall to my room. 

I really should have started getting my stuff together the night before, but we were moving into our new apartment and by the time we were done and ate dinner, none of us wanted to move from the couch any time soon. Even better yet, I should have gotten my shit together when I was packing my stuff from my parents’ house to move here. But I didn’t think about the big picture, apparently, so I was left having to sort through all of my poorly labeled boxes of shit for all the things I needed. 

When I packed from my parents’ house, I packed like a bumbling idiot and didn’t label anything more than what room the box belonged in. And although we spent a lot of time moving in yesterday, almost none of that time was spent unpacking our actual rooms. I also just had way too much shit and brought almost all of it, planning and getting my things together for the first day of marching band wasn’t the easiest task. 

I did already have two years of college marching band under my belt though, so I at least knew the kinds of things I needed to pack. It was the _finding_ these things part of the equation that was giving me hell. 

Connie came down the hall about a half hour later and knocked on my open door to get my attention. My head snapped upwards and raised an eyebrow, looking at him from my spot on the floor. “You getting hungry, by any chance?”

“You can’t seriously be hungry again, man. You just ate an entire bowl of ramen.”

“I can always eat, bro. You know that. But Armin came out of his coma long enough to grumble about being starving. So we might order something for delivery here in a little bit. You want in?”

“Depends on what we’re getting. I’m not really feeling pizza again,” I said, shrugging slightly. We’d ordered from Pizza Hut the previous night, because we were all too tired to even think about cooking dinner. Not that there would have been anything to cook in the house anyways. The only reason Connie had ramen to make was because he packed a box full of snacks that he kept in his room that, for some reason, included a couple packets of it that Armin made him put in the cupboard. Other than that, there was cold pizza in the fridge and fruit punch drink mix on the counter. “Or we could, you know, go grocery shopping. We’ll need real food eventually.”

He got a somewhat far-off look in his eyes as he gazed over my shoulder dreamily. “I do like real food…” After another few seconds of him spacing out and me staring at him oddly, he just about made me jump out of my skin. His head snapped back towards my face and his hands clapped down on my shoulders abruptly. “You have a good point there, Jean-bo. Throw on some shoes and let’s go wake up the coffee gremlin.”

“He would murder you if he ever knew you called him that.”

“He wouldn’t have the heart,” Connie waved nonchalantly, starting down the hall.

“He’d poison your coffee,” I said shortly, chuckling at the thought. “You put enough sugar in the shit, you’d never notice anyways.”

As I walked into the living room again, I saw Armin in the exact same position he was in when I left. He didn’t look like he’d moved an inch. Connie crossed the room and did the same thing he did to me not even a minute before. He clapped his hands down on Armin’s shoulders, which made him jolt in his seat and his right arm shoot out in front of him, his hand in a fist. 

I laughed from behind my two roommates. “Yeah, he wouldn’t have the heart to hurt you Connie. Okay.”

“Christ Armin. You almost punched me in the gut, throwing your arm out like that.” Armin was blinking quickly and looking around, trying to gain his bearings again and likely trying to find his assailant. He flipped around in his seat and glared at Connie, who had a smirk slowly forming on his face. “Hah, get it? Arm-in, Arm-out, Arm- _in_ , Arm- _out_. Eh, eh? I didn’t even mean to do that.”

“I really badly want to shove my arm _down_ your throat right now,” Armin grumbled lowly.

“Cheeky little Armin,” Connie laughed, taking a step back as a precautionary measure anyways. 

The angry blonde turned to me with a very annoyed look on his face. “Please tell me he woke me up for a reason, Jean. I was very comfortable and relaxed just now. And I don’t particularly want to have to hurt him the second day we’re living together.”

“Oh you know you love me,” Connie chimed, trying to lighten Armin’s mood in his own odd way. 

I shook my head, choosing to ignore him. “He said you were talking about being starving. And we have no food in the house. So we were going to go grocery shopping and thought you’d want to come along.”

Armin just groaned. "I must have been sleep talking. I don't remember saying anything about being hungry."

"Well, are you?" Connie asked, one eyebrow raised in interest. 

"Actually, yes. And we need to go grocery shopping at some point anyways. I may as well come with you two, so you actually buy quality and at least somewhat healthy food." 

“I’ll drive!” Connie yelled, throwing his arm up in the air like he was raising his hand for a teacher. I heard Armin groan at the same time that I sighed. Connie wasn’t the absolute worst driver ever, but he was reckless as all hell and made almost everyone nervous. His parking jobs were even worse though. I’d once seen him pull into a parking spot at a 45 degree angle, taking up part of three different parking spots, and he didn’t even try to fix it. But however much Armin and I didn’t want him to drive, it would have been a useless fight to have because we wouldn’t win in a million years. So we had to give up and let him drive whether we liked it or not. 

I opted for the back seat like I normally did when Connie drove, theorizing that if he somehow tried killing us, I’d be the safest in the back of the car. To his credit, he’s never gotten into an accident while driving, but he still scared the everloving piss out of me no matter what. Armin hated his driving more than I did, but he always picked the front seat anyways. I think he does it for two reasons, actually. I think he just doesn’t want Connie to feel weird if we’re both sitting in the back seat and farther away from him. But I feel like part of him thinks that he can help Connie avoid getting into an accident if he’s sitting up front and paying just as much, or more, attention to their surroundings as Connie is. My approach is the complete opposite; I pay as little attention to the road as possible, because it ends up scaring me less. 

So I buried myself into the entertainment my phone gave me, focussing all my attention on the little screen in my hands and ignoring Connie as he drove us to the nearest grocery store. I checked all my main social media accounts, checking up on all our friends, who were all pretty much in the same boat as us. Everyone was moving into their new places, getting all their things situated, and getting ready for school to start. Connie and I were the only of our friends that were in the marching band, but our friend Reiner was on the football team, and his accounts were full of conditioning pictures, team selfies, and all kinds of football related things. Krista and Ymir were both art majors, though in different disciplines, so their accounts were full of their art, new and old, cutesy couple selfies since they hadn't seen each other much over the summer, as well as them geeking out over their new art studio in their shared apartment. 

Eventually I ran out of new updates in the lives of people around me, so I delved into the realm of fantasy. Well, not really. More like the land of parody, I suppose would be more accurate.

See, there was a small trend around some colleges for someone to make a parody account on Twitter based around the school mascot. The one type of parody account was based off of the old internet meme Spoderman. The original thing was really kind of dumb and the person that ran it was a bit of an ass a lot of times, so the jokes weren't very funny. However, all the school accounts based off that I had seen weren't as immature and we're actually really funny. So I decided that the Trost Titans needed one of these accounts. 

The account I created for "Tooler the Tootan" (Tyler the Titan) was wasn't very old, but over the summer break it had started gaining a good few more followers. To waste more time, I logged in as Tooler, only expecting to maybe see a few more followers and then post something about people coming back to campus. What I saw instead, I had to stare at for a good minute or two before it actually sunk in.

Starring up at me from my phone was a tweet at Tooler from the very person that inspired his existence. Well, the main reason I decided to create the account at least. 

Scoot the Scoot _@Scootthescoot_  
@Toolerthetootan bro rely bro yu tryn to b me r sumthn? bro do u even no who yu mesin wit ?

“What a bag of dicks!” 

“Who's a bag of dicks?” Connie asked in his typical cheerful tone. 

“Fucking Scoot is,” I muttered, fairly irked at what I was looking at.

“Was that even a real sentence?” Armin asked sarcastically, giving me a funny look in the rearview mirror. 

I sighed, shaking my head.“Remember how I made that parody Twitter account for Tyler the Titan?”

Connie laughed. “Hah, Tooler, yeah. Good shit, Jean.”

“Thanks. Well I kind of got the idea for it from someone over at Shiganshina. Someone runs an account called Scoot the Scoot. Y’know, Scott the Scout? Yeah, so I saw that, and I mean, I saw other school's having similar things too, but I saw Scoot and thought, like, how hilarious would it be to have one for Tyler and then eventually get them to fight or something, since we're rivals and all. And then I made Tooler.”

“Okay…” Armin nodded slowly. “So what makes Scoot a bag of dicks then?”

“Because he found me - er, Tooler.”

“I thought that's what you wanted to happen.”

“Yeah but now he's picking a fight.”

Armin then turned entirely around and gave me a scrutinous look. “Jean, I'm not seeing the issue here. You just said you wanted the two accounts to fight.”

I groaned. “I dunno. I guess I wanted it to be on my terms. I wanted to set Tooler up with a bit of a fan base before making contact with Scoot. And he's being a dick about it too. He's saying that I'm trying to be him.”

From that, Armin gave me ‘the look’. The one typically reserved for Connie when he does something very obviously stupid. 

“Oh shit bro! You're getting the look I always get!” Connie laughed, turning to look at Armin and I. That earned him a snack on the arm and a ‘watch where you're driving’ before Armin turned his attention back to me.

“You _are_ trying to be him Jean. You said he's the reason you created your account. He's right, and completely justified in saying that, therefore not being a bag of dicks. You have no case against him.”

“Well I don't know how to respond to that either. Maybe he's right, but I'm still ticked.” I half-grumbled, crossing my arms defiantly, even though it definitely made me just look like I was pouting. 

“So then continue fighting with him. That’s what you wanted anyways. He ticked you off, so retaliate. I’m really not seeing the you issues here Jean.”

I continued grumbling, not wanting to listen to Armin’s completely logical reasoning simply because I was being a stubborn asshole. Nothing much new there. “I really hate it when you’re right, you know that?” He merely hummed in response and otherwise ignored me. I did see the smirk still plastered on Connie’s face in the rearview mirror though, so I shot him a dirty look as well, before turning my attention back to my phone. 

_’Alright Jean, this douche calls you out and accuses you of trying to be him. What’s your retaliation? What can you say that would eat away at the person behind Scoot? Or that would tick anyone off really. It’s not like you know the guy at all. Shit, for all you know it could be a girl running the account; not a guy at all. Abrasive assholes come in all shapes, sizes, and genders, afterall. So what kind of retort would universally piss someone off?’_

“Jean, if you can’t even figure out how to respond to this, how do you expect to pull off a full-fledged fight with the guy?” Armin asked skeptically, eyeing me over his shoulder. Not surprising that he figured out the reason for my silence. He could read me like an open book.

“It’s the internet Armin. No one will know how long it took him to respond. For all we know, that Scoot dude took a week to come up with that. That’s what’s so great about internet fights; you can take as long as you want to come up with the best response possible.”

“Yeah, Connie’s got a point,” I agreed happily, glad to get Armin off my ass for at least one small moment. “I can take my sweet ass time coming up with the perfect retort.”

“You should totally do a ‘your mom’ joke though,” Connie laughed, wiggling his eyebrows in the rearview mirror at me. “They’re a classic. Bound to piss anyone off.”

“That’s a stupid idea. Jean, don’t do that,” Armin sighed.

I chuckled to myself, a glorious idea making it’s way through my thought processes. “Too late Armin. Too late.”


	3. Three

Tooler the Tootan _@Toolerthetootan_  
@Scootthescoot bruh teh onli reson id want 2 b u wud b 2 get closr 2 ur mom

“Alright, that’s _it!_ You crossed the line Tooler! You crossed the damned line.”

“Eren, stop yelling at your boyfriend! I’m trying to read here!” Mikasa shouted through the wall separating our rooms. I don’t know why I ever agreed to having our rooms be right next to each other; you’d think I would have had enough of that while growing up. 

“But he brought Mom into this! He crossed the line Mikasa!” I yelled back, choosing to ignore the boyfriend comment. 

Sasha’s voice cut in from the hallway before my sister could respond. “He doesn’t even know you, dipshit! How would he know your mom’s dead?” 

“Well fuck you too Braus.” I snapped, just loud enough that she’d probably still hear. She did, and she barged through the door of my room about a second later. 

“I don’t want to hear it Eren,” she said crossly. “You don’t get bothered when people bring up your mom. You stopped being bothered by it a long time ago, which you’ve said yourself. The only reason you’re bothered by this guy is because you’re holding some stupid grudge against him because he runs the account rival to yours. Grow up.”

“Damn. Get it Braus,” Marco chuckled as he walked past my door on his way to the bathroom. 

I grumbled, salty for no reason other than me knowing she was right. “I thought you found this whole thing funny.” I said to her, instead of trying to fight a useless battle.

“I do. I want you two to keep fighting, because it's really amusing. But as your friend, I owe it to you to help you not drag that school rivalry shit too far into your own life, just because Scoot’s exploiting it for laughs.” Sasha walked over to where I was sitting at my desk and placed both her hands on either side of my face, bringing it up to look her square in the eyes. She stared at me for a moment before nodding, at herself maybe, tapping my left cheek and taking a couple steps back. “Now you go ahead and put away the misguided anger, buck up, and find the wittiest response you can to just fuck with Tooler’s head.”

With that, she spun away from me and shut the door to my room softly on her way out. 

Scoot The Scoot _@Scootthescoot_  
@Toolerthtootan mi mums got nuthin on ur dad . .. Scoot needs meself a nu sugerdaddy eniwayss

Tooler the Tootan _@Toolerthetootan_  
@Scootthescoot das fine das fin bro . we all no u shiganshitheads brok af no shame n lil xtr cash on te side

Scoot The Scoot _@Scootthescoot_  
@Toolerthtootan bro if i cal him daddy dos that maek us foreallz bros ?.

Tooler the Tootan _@Toolerthetootan_  
@Scootthescoot ew no ur just a frekkin sikko man

Scoot The Scoot _@Scootthescoot_  
@Toolerthtootan attn all TrooSt tooTans ! trnsfr to shig wile u cen! we dont kinkshaem on dis campis

I started to feel pretty smug about myself at that point, because up until then, I was getting responses almost immediately after I'd tweeted at him. But I sat at that desk for at least 15 straight minutes, waiting for a response, and none came my way. Eventually I stood up and made my way into the kitchen, a huge smirk plastered on my face, which faded as soon as I saw the time on the microwave. 

“Balls!” 

“What now? Did your boyfriend insult Mika this time and now it's personal?” Sasha chided from the other room. I didn't realize my voice had been loud enough for her to hear, but hot damn, the neighbors could have heard her with no problem. 

“No, I'm gonna be late for work!” I yelled in response, running back down the hall to my room. 

“Hurry your ass up and I can give you a ride,” Marco's muffled voice called out. He was nowhere as loud as Sasha was when yelling, that's for sure. “But I'm walking out the door in two minutes with or without you.”

Roughly three and a half minutes later, I was following Marco down the front steps, shoes in one hand and phone in the other. I wasn't even sure if I had my wallet at that point, but it didn't really matter since Marco was driving and we were just going to work. Plenty easy to get free food when you got hungry and worked at a restaurant. 

Marco turned the key in the ignition and gave me an amused smile as I fumbled my way into his small car. “Boyfriend got you all on a fluster, eh?”

“Yeah yeah, just drive. We're both going to be late at this point,” I grumbled, shoving my feet into my shoes and angrily tying the laces. I was really starting to get sick of the whole ‘boyfriend’ thing everyone seemed to be throwing at me over this. I don’t even know who runs the damn account. It could literally be any ol’ asshole running around Trost, picking fights with me. Or, well, not me exactly. And, I mean, I guess I did start this whole thing, so maybe he’s not actually an asshole. 

Who am I really kidding though? He’s probably a bigger asshole than I am. Who the hell else runs a parody twitter account of their school mascot and fights with their rival’s parody twitter account? Some grade-A assholes, that’s who. And like hell I'd date anyone that's as big of a dick as I am. 

“Yo, Eren. Quit dreaming about your boy-toy and get out of my car before you're even later to work.” Marco's voice knocked me out of my thoughts about as much as I wanted to knock out his teeth at the reference to the very thing I had just been thinking about. I didn't even want to justify that with a response. Partially because I knew he, along with all my other friends for that matter, wasn't going to stop until it ceased gaining a reaction from me. But also because he actually _did_ catch me thinking about him. 

Slamming the car door a little extra hard, I followed him into the building. I was trying to wipe the scowl from my face since I knew I'd be dealing with actual customers that night, but there's only so much a guy can do when that's his default facial expression. I shook my head as I clocked in, hoping that maybe I could physically shake all thoughts of Tooler out of my head before I walked out into the dining room. Unsurprisingly, it didn't do much. What did make me stop thinking about it all was the ridiculous amount of work that I saw needed to be done when I walked through the double doors. 

All four of us worked at a restaurant called Maria’s, and out of us all, I of course had the shittiest job. Marco was a bartender, Mikasa was a server, and Sasha was one of the cooks. I, on the other hand, was a dishwasher some days and a busser others. That night, I walked into the dining room to see a tub full of dirty dishes and over half the tables covered in even more. 

“Eren, thank god,” a voice said behind me, a heavy sigh ending the statement. I turned around and saw one of the hostesses, Mina, looking as flustered as is expect with that much of a mess. “Tomas woke up sick this morning and no one else could come in today. I've been trying to bus what I could, but there's only so much I can do without someone else. Good luck; you may actually need it tonight.”

And I didn't have a single thought about Tooler until I got home, crashed in my bed, and saw the notification on my phone. 

Tooler the Tootan _@Toolerthetootan_  
@Scootthescoot mm bb u dun even kno wut kinda kinki shit i git in2 wit teh kind of $$ i hav

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really starting to fall in love with this story, so y'all are gonna be in for a treat.  
> And by treat, I mean fairly consistent updates. Hopefully.


	4. Four

For the entire next week, whenever I wasn’t busy at marching band practices, which took up roughly all of each day, the Twitter-battle raged on between Tooler and Scoot. Each of the accounts had gained at least twice as many followers as they’d originally had, even just within a week of it going on. My phone was constantly notifying me on new followers, to the point where I actually turned the notifications off. I just checked the follower count again every time I went to respond to another one of Scoot’s tweets, realizing that I had started gaining on him, despite his head start.

It was the Saturday before classes started, and the day after our last day of band camp. Connie and I were both completely worn out from the week, so when our friends wanted to hang out, we made the executive decision for everyone to converge on our house so neither of us had to go anywhere. 

Curled up in the corner of the living room, in my own little nest of pillows and blankets, a scowl started making it’s way onto my face. I was looking at the most recent response by Scoot on my phone and wasn’t particularly amused. I had to give it to the guy; he knew what to say to make things difficult. I had been staring at that response for at least an hour, on and off, and I couldn’t come up with anything to say in return. Instead, my mind started wandering, though keeping on the topic of our little war, and a thought crossed my mind. I hadn’t actually meant to say it out loud, by my mouth had other plans apparently. 

“How much shit would either of us would get in if our schools ever found out about these damned accounts?”

No one was really paying attention to me at that point, as they were all too busy debating the logistics of various fictional character matchups and who they thought would best “obliterate” their opponent, as Ymir so eloquently phrased it. So it didn't surprise me that my seemingly random outburst threw everyone off, and into momentary silence.

“Jean.” 

“Armin,” I snapped back, getting more defensive than I’d planned. 

“I think you need to take a break with this whole thing. It’s taking over your life,” he said calmly, giving me his best parenting look, as if he were my father telling middle-school me to stop obsessing over a girl. I mean, not that that happened _often_ or anything. Maybe like once or twice. Before I realized I was gay and started obsessing over boys. 

But anyways, I didn’t appreciate Armin acting like I was a stupid little child with a new pointless obsession. 

“It’s not taking over my life Armin. This is a perfectly healthy new hobby of mine.”

“Wait, what’s even going on here anyways?” Krista asked all of a sudden, giving Armin and I alternating questioning glances. 

“See, it’s not taking over my life if some of my friends don’t even know about it.”

“It’s his dumb little Twitter war with the guy from Shig,” Ymir whispered to her girlfriend. “Reiner and I were talking about it the other day when you were cleaning your camera lenses. Remember? Reiner was reading the Scoot tweets and I was reading the Tooler ones. You kept rolling your eyes.”

“Ohh, yeah, that makes sense then. I didn’t know that’s what they were talking about.”

Armin scoffed. “Point made.”

“Alright, whatever. Fine. But what does it matter to you anyways?” I countered, holding my hand out in a, quite sassy, questioning gesture. “I just don’t understand why you seem to be so affected by this. It’s not like you’re a part of it or have to have literally anything to do with it.”

“It’s all I’ve been flipping hearing about for the past week Jean.”

I saw Connie nod slowly and spoke just as hesitantly. “You have kind of been only talking about it, and maybe a little about band.” He flailed his hands around in some sort of transitional hand gesture and changed his tone of voice. “I mean, I freaking love this whole fight thing you’ve got going on. It’s hilarious. I definitely don’t want you to stop it any time soon. But...I do see where Armin’s coming from.”

“For the record,” Ymir chimed in again. “I absolutely love this shit. I’m just eating it all up, tweet by tweet.” Reiner nodded, muttering, ‘same’, without trying to interrupt her. “But I don’t get why it’s infiltrating your personal life so much. If it’s a hobby, then you shouldn’t be so fucking enamored by it that you can’t use your shit-brain to even think about anything else.”

“Maybe because this tool from Shit-Central is insulting me and my school on a daily basis. And him and his dumbass cronies over there are ganging up on me day in and day out.” I countered, giving her an equally sassy look to match her own. 

“First off, you are not Tooler. They’re not ganging up on you; they’re jumping on Tooler’s dick all the time. So separate yourself a bit from your fantasy shit hole there.”

“Whatever,” I mumbled, rolling my eyes. “Those people over there are seriously just the fuckign worst. I hate that damned school and everyone that goes there.”

“Okay seriously, you are being a massive fuckhead about this,” Ymir said plainly, rolling her eyes at me this time. “And I’m willing to bet the shithead behind Scoot is doing the same fucking thing you’re doing, because your ‘cronies’, A.K.A. people you’ve never met before that think Tooler is funny and want to help berate Scoot, are doing the exact same shit to him. You’re not the only one getting attacked. And seriously, you hate Trost more than anyone over at Shitshiner does. You have no school spirit whatsoever. There’s also literally nothing wrong with the people over there. You even like Marco, you dumb clod! Your whole problem is that you like having someone to fight with that isn’t me.”

Alright, she had some good points. Especially the last one; she’s the only person I know that puts up with and dishes back the same kind of shit I throw at them. It’s just as fun fighting with her as it is warring with Scoot. 

“So I’m officially employing Marco to find out who runs the Scoot account and you guys are going to meet, and probably going to fuck, because hot damn do you guys have some sexual tension. Shit, I can feel it 25 miles away.”

“Ymir, Jesus Christ,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “Why in hell would I want to fuck that asshole?” Reiner snorted, which Connie echoed a second later. “Shut up, bad phrasing. What I meant was why would I want anything to do with someone that has spent so much effort and time fighting with me?”

“For the fourteenth time Jean,” Armin started, obviously fed up with this whole conversation. “You said yourself that you _wanted_ to fight with this guy! It’s been your whole plan since creating that stupid account.”

Connie nodded hesitantly again. “He’s kinda right bro.”

I sighed. “Okay true, but that doesn’t mean I wanna fuck the guy.”

Krista, never as innocent as many people seem to think she is, was the person so bring up what I was hoping to avoid the minute I started defending this point. “Hon, 90% of your so called fights consist of making sex jokes or talking about different kinks. Ymir’s right; you guys wanna get it on, whether you realize it or not. There’s something there, at least subconsciously.”

Armin laughed. “Yes, good, talk to him in his own language. Maybe he’ll use the last two years of psychology classes he’s taken to think this through for once. What’s all that about repressed urges and your ID impulses?”

“Alright, that’s it!” Ymir declared, twisting into an odd position and pulling her phone out of her back pocket. “I’m calling Marco right now and tasking him with finding this ‘Scoot’ clown.”

“No, shit wait!” I yelled, my hands flying out in front of me as if to stop her. Obviously that did nothing. 

She just smirked at me and held up a finger like she was telling me to hold on. Sarcastic bitch. “Oh, hey little cousin. How’s life with your group of idiots? Wait, wait, I’m going to put you on speaker phone. Jean, Armin, Connie, Reiner, and the Babe are all here, so no trash talking like usual.”

“Yeah yeah, shut your whore mouth Ymir,” Marco’s slightly distorted voice chided through the phone.

“Love you too Boo,” Ymir said, only semi-sarcastically. “Now really, how’s it going living with Stone-Cold McGee, Mr. McAngerPants, and Iron Gut Sally?”

Connie leaned over the arm of his chair, whispering to me so Marco couldn’t hear on the other end. “Iron Gut Sally? What the hell do those nicknames mean?”

I smiled and shook my head. “From what Ymir’s said, she’s basically female you, only with an even bigger appetite. The other girl is apparently confrontational until you get to know her, with a really stoney front. And the other guy has some sort of anger issues or something. Marco’s living with a weird bunch of people I guess.” He made an ‘o’ shape with his mouth and just nodded slowly at me before turning back whatever Marco was telling Ymir.

“...driving everyone nuts with his newest obsession. But enough about my crazy roommates. I know you didn’t call just to hear about my dumb friends. What’s really up?” Marco asked, and I could almost picked his eyebrow raised and head cocked. It was the look he got when he was either suspicious of something or gossiping. 

Ymir and I have known each other since early middle school, and I met Marco at a summer picnic their family had the first year we knew each other. Those two, even though they lived in different school districts, were super close their whole lives, which meant that the closer I got to Ymir, the closer I got to Marco. We had a short-lived little fling the summer between eighth and ninth grades, but it was mainly an excuse for both of us to figure out that we did like boys, and then to do a little “practicing” before we entered the big world of high school. Then we went back to being friends again and Ymir stopped punching me so much for ‘deflowering her sweet, innocent freckled angel’. 

“Alright,” Ymir started dramatically. “So Jeanbo has gotten himself into quite the little pickle, and I’m putting it on you to do some investigating on the matter.”

“Okay, well, why would I be the best person to call for this?”

Ymir just laughed shortly. She opened her mouth to speak again, but afraid of what she would say, I cut her off. 

“Because you’re our closest friend at Shiganshina and we need to find someone there.”

“Facebook is a wonderful thing, you know that?” Marco asked, only somewhat sarcastically. Obviously he didn’t think that he’d be much more helpful to us than just about anything else, but he really was going to be the best person for the job. 

“We don’t exactly have a name to look up.”

He laughed. “Then who the hell am I supposed to be looking for and how the hell am I supposed to find them?”

I sighed, rubbing my temples. I couldn’t believe we were actually trying to find Scoot. But if I didn’t work with Marco on this, I knew Ymir would do it behind my back anyways, so it was in my best interests to play along. “All I have is the person’s Twitter-handle. I don’t even know if it’s a guy or a girl because it’s a parody account.” A terrifyingly long stretch of silence filled the room. 

When Marco talked next, it was very slow and drawn out, as if he was very carefully thinking every word over. “Uhh, what do you mean it’s a parody account?”

“It’s a dumb meme-war - mmph…”

I shut Armin up by chucking one of my many pillows across the room and hitting him square in the face. 

“A what now?”

“I run a parody account of the school’s mascot and there’s a similar one for Shig that has -”

I couldn’t get anymore words out because the only sound my brain could process was the piercing scream that came from Marco’s end of the phone. Everyone in the room was instantly on edge. 

“Marco!” Ymir yelled almost instantly. “What’s wro-oh.”

His scream turned into the loudest, most ridiculous laughter I had ever come out of that boy’s mouth. And I’ve heard some crazy laughter from Marco before. He just, for some reason, felt the need to scream bloody murder before bursting into hysterical laughter. 

No matter how many times we tried calming him down, Marco’s laughter wouldn’t stop. Eventually we gave up and just waited for it to die down naturally. He was almost back to the normal state of human functioning when we heard a faint voice in the background asking, ‘what the fuck was going on,’ with Marco.

Unfortunately, that only made Marco scream again, starting the cycle over again. Ymir and I both cursed and shook our heads. This time, however, Marco’s laughter was mixed with somewhat incoherent babbling. “Shit...Eren, you...Jean fucking...you two...and the...SHIT! You...why the...fucking chances you and...God Dammit!” 

Once again, he eventually fell back into, almost, normalcy and found his words for real this time. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake Jean, are you telling me that you run the Tooler the Tootan Twitter account?”

“Yeah but -”

“WHAT?!” we all heard very cleanly being screamed from across the room Marco was in. 

“Yeah, Eren, get your ass back here. Alright Trost gang, you’re all on speaker now too.”

“Wait, Marco, have you seen this stupid little account of Jean’s then?” Armin asked, surprise evident in his voice. 

“Oh, have I ever!” Marco exclaimed, cackling to himself. There was some quiet grumbling through the phone, getting distorted between the two layers of speakerphone going on. “Eren, shut up. I wanna do it. You owe me this much fun at least.”

I was starting to get fed up with all this stalling. “Okay, so you’ve seen it. Cool. Why did you laugh so damned hard though? It’s not like it’s a really hilarious account or anything.”

“Yeah, it’s actually really shitty,” the other voice - Eren - said a little louder this time, obviously very grumpy about the whole situation. _’What is his problem?’_ I could hear Marco hitting the guy though, probably to get him to shut up, which made him mumble, “Okay, fine. God.”

“So Jean,” Marco started, stifling laughter - _again_ \- obviously very amused with himself for whatever reason. “You run Tooler and want help finding Scoot, right?”

“I mean, I could give two shits about finding out who Scoot is, but apparently Ymir, and everyone else I guess, think I should. So...yeah?”

“God, I wish we were Skyping right now,” he chuckled. 

“Why?” I sighed, wishing he’d get to whatever point he seemed to have hidden. 

“So you two could actually see each other when I say, ‘Tooler, meet Scoot. Scoot, meet Tooler’.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regular updates? What? I actually posted another chapter fairly quickly? This is crazy.  
> Almost as crazy as this story is getting.  
> But I love it.  
> And hopefully you do too!  
> I love hearing from you all - it totally motivates me to want to write more about these idiots. I mean, I wanna write more anyways, but your comments give me a nice kick to really keep me writing. So keep that up and I'll keep this up!


	5. Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Not sure if this is super necessary, but there are mentions of homophobia, without intent though. Something is interpreted the wrong way I guess?)

It was a damned near miracle that I had a Saturday night off of work, but for some reason, the owner of Maria’s decided to take pity on all of her college employees and give us the weekend off seeing as it was the last one before the semester started. And instead of going out and partying like I’m sure tons of college kids were doing, all four of us were being as lazy as possible. I’d spent most of my day binge watching TV shows on Netflix and before I knew it, it was nearing six at night and my stomach was beginning to feel the fact that I hadn’t eaten since I woke up at eleven. 

I was planning on beating Sasha to making dinner that night as a nice surprise. However, when I left my room, I heard something being dropped into the sink full of dishes, didn't see Sasha in her room, and figured I had been too late. Walking to the kitchen, I saw Mikasa sitting on her bed, pretty close to finishing the book she started reading that morning. Marco was the only one that had left the house all day, and it was only because he realized he was running low on various hair or hygiene products apparently. Him asking if I needed him to pick me up anything was the only reason I even realized what time it was. We lived close enough to the retail area of the city that I knew he'd be back before dinner was even ready. 

Of course, as I rounded the corner into the kitchen, I saw that Sasha was already fairly involved in whatever she was making, so I may have been wrong. 

“Oh hey Eren, hope you're hungry!” Sasha greeted, the wooden spoon in her hand waving at me. “I'm making chicken curry, and there's gonna be plenty to go around.”

I leaned against the fridge and inhaled the masterpiece cooking away on the stove. “Smells amazing. But y’know, it was my full intention to surprise you by making dinner tonight. Looks like you beat me to it.””

“Aw, Er-Bear, that's so nice of you. But you know I love cooking!”

“Yeah, but that's like all you do. You cook at work and then you cook here for us like all the time. Someone else can take over every once in awhile for you. Or are you just nervous about eating anything that we make? Afraid it don't live up to your own creations? “

She laughed, tossing a few eye-balled amounts of spices into the pan. “Whoopsies.”

“Whoopsies you messed up or whoopsies I was right? “

“When do I ever mess up food Eren?” 

I just laughed and shook my head. “So I’m guessing you probably don’t want my unskilled hands contaminating anything while trying to help out?”

“Sure, let’s go with that. Or the fact that it’s almost done. It just needs to simmer for a few minutes and then we’ll be ready to eat, and there’s not much you can do on that front to help out.”

“I’ll grab bowls and stuff then. That way at least I’ve contributed something tonight.”

“Aw, look at mama’s little helper,” she said in her baby-voice, looking over her shoulder to laugh at the angry look on my face. I flipped her off, to which literally cackled, and grabbed four deep bowls out of the cupboard next to the sink. Sasha continued trying to mess with me, while still keeping an eye on her food, and only gave it up when she had to turn her full attention back to the curry on the stove. I took that as my chance to escape. Or at least, to go tell Mikasa that dinner was ready. 

The three of us dished up bowls full of rice and curry and sat down at our shity excuse for a dining room table to eat. The table we’d gotten from Goodwill over the summer was probably the oldest one we could have found, and time had not treated it well. If someone shifted in their chair the wrong way, the whole table would shake. We’ve spilled countless drinks on the damned thing even just in the previous week or so of using it. We had already talked about how it needed to go. Or, better yet, how we were going to burn it once we got a new one. 

Marco walked in when the rest of us were finishing up, but he told us not to wait up for him, since he was just going to eat in his room anyways. If we didn’t know Marco better, we might have questioned his decision to not be around his friends on one of our last truly free days for a long time. But we did in fact know him very well, and we knew that he sometimes felt the need to be alone for a while. So, when we decided to watch a movie on Netflix later on, we invited him to join us but respected that he didn’t want to. 

We were mostly relaxing anyways - it’s not like we were planning on doing anything crazy that night - so it didn’t necessarily matter that we weren’t all in the same room together. We probably could have all spent the evenings in our own rooms, not talking to each other at all, and we’d all be totally fine with that. We lived together; we didn’t need to spend every waking moment with each other. 

Sasha, Mikasa, and I ended up picking one of the most ridiculously shitty movies on Netflix to watch, just to make fun of it the whole time. We we all on the couch together, feet on the coffee table, and hands in the bowl of popcorn sitting on Mikasa’s lap. She’d threatened to cut off our fingers - _”Slowly,”_ \- if we managed to spill the bowl, so Sasha and I were being very hesitant with our reaches throughout the whole first half of the movie. 

It was a shitty D-grade horror movie, and we’d had the volume up pretty high, so it almost didn’t phase me when I heard a more familiar screech coming from down the hall. When the scream dissolved into laughter, however, my brain put the facts together and realized that it was Marco who’d just made those noises. The girls noticed too, but they both looked at me expectantly, as if I was supposed to go figure out what what happening with our roommate. I sighed, rolling my eyes as I stood up and walked towards the back hall. 

I leaned my head through the open door of Marco’s room and saw him at his desk, phone against his ear, cackling like a fucking maniac. I stared for a minute, hoping he’d freaking stop it, but that wasn’t about to happen, obviously. “Jesus Marco. What the fuck is going on with you?”

He spun around in his chair and took in the image of me standing in his doorway before absolutely bursting out laughing again. This time, however, he was pointing at me and muttering utter nonsense about me and someone named John between his laughter. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for him to stop. When he didn’t, I turned and started walking back to the living room. _’Who’s the John guy though? And why is his name pronounced like a pretentious douche?’_

I was a few feet down the hall, still shaking my head at the ridiculousness that I couldn’t even begin to understand, when I heard Marco say something coherent. It stopped me dead in my tracks for that reason, and for what he actually said. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake Jean, are you telling me that you run the Tooler the Tootan Twitter account?”

“WHAT?!” I screamed, out of shock most likely. 

I had already started walking back to his room when Marco called out, “Yeah, Eren, get your ass back here.” He set his phone down on his desk as I walked into the room. “Alright Trost gang, you’re all on speaker now too.” He smirked as he saw me, but instead of laughing insanely again, he only gestured for me to sit on the edge of his bed. 

A slightly muffled, but very surprised, voice came through the phone next, asking, “Wait, Marco, have you seen this stupid little account of Jean’s then?” I’d figured he was on the phone with his cousin and her friends from Trost, but I’d never met them and really didn’t even know any of their names in the slightest. 

“Oh, have I ever!” Marco cackled, looking straight at me with a purely evil grin on his face. I mumbled to myself about him and Tooler, since that dick was somehow a part of the conversation at hand. Marco shushed me and I just rolled my eyes. 

The next person to speak sounded completely aggravated, and kind of on edge. “Okay, so you’ve seen it. Cool. Why did you laugh so damned hard though? It’s not like it’s a really hilarious account or anything.” His words were tinged with a bit of defense as well, like he was trying to stick up for the Tooler account. 

I couldn’t help but add to his frustration. “Yeah, it’s actually really shitty,” I added, hoping to piss off whoever it was that seemed to be on Tooler’s side. Marco reached out and slapped me in the chest, though, so I muttered an apology and scowled at the phone. As if the people on the other end could see me or something. 

“So Jean,” Marco started, almost teasingly. He was, once again, trying to keep from laughing and I just wanted to hit him right back. I didn’t know what was happening, or what in the hell was so fucking funny, but I was getting real sick of being left out of the loop. “You run Tooler and want help finding Scoot, right?” 

My eyes instantly snapped open and my face contorted into something resembling that cat that always seemed pissed off that the internet seemed to love. I was too busy processing what I’d just heard to catch what this John guy had said in response. _’Probably something about how he’s such a pussy that he wants to find me so he can ask me to stop ‘bullying him’ or some shit like that.’_ But I vaguely heard Marco saying he wished we were on Skype. I cocked my eyebrow at that, still apparently not up for using my words again just yet. When the other guy asked why, Marco’s response just about made me scream. 

“So you two could actually see each other when I say, ‘Tooler, meet Scoot. Scoot, meet Tooler’.”

There was silence all around; no one knew what to say apparently. Marco wanted to start laughing again, I could tell, but he seemed to be waiting for some other reaction first. It came in the form of his cousin cackling just as maniacally as he had been earlier. I’d met Ymir before, and I knew the kind of things she thought were funny, so I was surprised that she had waited so long before laughing. I would have figured her cackling would have been almost instantaneous. 

After Ymir started laughing, Marco joined, followed by at least three other people on the Trost end of the phonecall. There was no stopping it; at least, I didn’t want to try to do it. John, however, was much dumber than I was. That dumbass tried yelling actual words through that mess. 

“What the actual fucking hell are you talking about Marco?!”

Of course, that only made him and Ymir, at least, laugh even harder. _’I hate everything. I hate them. I hate my life. I fucking loathe Tooler. And Marco knows him. Fuck. Everything._

My face was tense from all the scowling I’d been doing in that small period of time, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop it because of how utterly pissed off I was. 

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and started doing the only thing I could think of that would relieve some of my anger at the whole situation; I opened Twitter and started composing a new tweet. 

Scoot The Scoot _@Scootthescoot_  
@Toolerthtootan u stil a fukin bich ass dikweed notin cen cheng tat

I hit the button to send it and tried focusing on my own satisfaction rather than the cackling still happening all around me. It was so loud through the phone that it almost sounded like there were actually more than two people in the room. 

Soon enough, a raging, “GOD DAMMIT!”, reminiscent of that guy on Archer that always somehow gets shot, cut off almost all of the laughter. Except for mine; it started mine. “You’re the fucking bitch-ass dickweed, you idiotic bastard!”

There was silence for a split second after my laughter stopped. Marco was looking at me as if he knew I was guilty of something, but Ymir was the first to speak up. “Holy shit Jean, what was that about?”

“That flaming bag of ass is over there tweeting about this!”

“Barely,” I scoffed. “I’m not the one dumb enough to bring our friends into this.”

“I never - you fucking...ugh. Jesus Christ I hate you so much. I didn’t bring them into this. They’re the ones that kept interfering and called Marco so he could - you know what? I don’t have to explain myself to you! You fucking started this!”

“Man, I too wish we were skyping,” Ymir said, chuckling slightly. “I sure wish you could see Jean’s face right now, Eren.”

“We can arrange that quite easily.” That cocky, up-to-no-good look was creeping back onto Marco’s face as he reached forward and pulled his laptop closer to himself. “You have your computer right, Ymir?”

“When do I ever _not_ have Alphonse with me?” 

Marco laughed, shaking his head. “Fair enough.” I was a tad confused until I realized that she must have named her computer, and then I realized how characteristically Ymir that actually was. “Start a call when you get it up. We’ll see you then.”

Marco hung up his phone, opened his computer, logged onto Skype, and waited for Ymir to do the same. He just kept shooting me looks that I had a hard time fully deciphering and I continued to look at him with impatience. I was genuinely interested in how this was all turning out, and I definitely wanted to finally see the man behind that damned Tooler account, but Marco’s sudden over-interest in the Scoot vs. Tooler thing was starting to get on my nerves a little. 

Marco had decided it would be better if he sat next to me on his bed so we could both be in the frame more easily, so he did just that, nudging me with his elbow as he sat down. “Aren’t you so glad Ymir goes to Trost?”

“It sure seems like you are,” I answered as nonchalantly as I could bring myself to. 

“Are you kidding me? This is fantastic! And it’s all thanks to me, really.” 

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

He laughed. “I told you about the Tooler account to begin with. None of this would have ever happened if you hadn’t assaulted the information out of my when we first moved in.”

Ymir’s call flashing across the screen inhibited me from answering, which made me insanely happy. I didn’t want to think about having Marco to thank for this source of entertainment in my life. Even I could admit that my ego was too big for that. 

When the screen came into focus, I saw a group of six people squished up around a couch, staring at the computer in front of them. They all waved as soon as they saw Marco and I and we waved back. Marco threw an arm around my shoulder and pulled me tight against his side, effectively weirding me out. “Trost crew, this is Eren, or Scoot, as our dear Jean-bo knows him as.”

 

The boy in the middle of the couch stiffened and said Marco’s name under his breath, almost warningly. He looked around my height, though that was hard to tell sitting down, though he was a little lankier than I was and had a ridiculous two-toned undercut topping his head. 

“Oh, oops. Was I not supposed to let Eren hear your childhood nickname?” Marco all but cackled again to himself. 

I raised an eyebrow as I put the dots together. The agitated boy squished between a small blond boy and the conjoined form of Ymir and her girlfriend must have been that douchey John guy. And Douchey-John ran Tooler’s account. I grin spread across my face shortly thereafter. 

“Ah, Tooler - or should I say John-bo, nice to finally meet you. You look as ridiculous as I’d imagined you would. Maybe more, with that haircut.”

His eyes narrowed as the darker skinned boy with a buzz cut sitting by his feet started laughing. 

John kicked him hard enough to make a point, but gently enough to be nice. _’I guess he’s not a total dick then.’_ “My name’s not John,” he told me, after telling his friend to shut up. “It’s Jean.”

“What’s the difference? The second one just makes you sound like a douche.” I paused for effect. “Which you are. So I guess it fits.”

“It’s French motherfucker. Spelled E-A, not O-H.”

Marco shoved my shoulder lightly. “You’re one to talk. Your name’s not exactly spelled normally.”

John - excuse me, _Jean_ \- snorted. “What, is it spelled with an E like a girl’s name?”

I scowled again. “Two E’s, no I. So no, not like a girl.” I folded my arms over my chest and rolled my eyes. “God, you’re such a child. Calling me a girl like it’s a bad thing.”

“Yeah you misogynistic ass!” the large, short haired, blond man leaning over the back of the couch exclaimed. He would have been the last person in that room I would have thought would say those words. He was absolutely massive; he had to play some kind of contact sport. “You talked shit about his mom too, didn’t you? Damn Jean, way to be insensitive.”

“You know his mom died, right?” Ymir blurted, slapping Jean’s arm only half-playfully. 

“Goodness gracious Jean.” The small blond boy shook his head, eyes closed, looking completely exasperated. 

“He’s the one talking about banging my dad and making him be his sugar daddy! How’s that any different?”

Krista shifted on Ymir’s lap so that she was sitting more on the arm of the couch instead. She looked at Jean curiously for a second before saying, “But then you kinkshamed him, so really, you’re the one that looks like an old fashioned prude here.”

Jean’s face flushed almost instantly. “I am NOT a prude!”

He started arguing with his friends, and while I was enjoying myself, Marco was apparently not as interested anymore. “Well that derailed really fucking fast,” he said, loud enough to cut off the arguing over in Trost. 

“Really though,” Jean snapped, looking angrily back and forth at his friends. He looked at Marco then and asked, “What was even the point of us Skyping?”

I snorted. “So I could see how stupid your face looks. Y’know, just like Ymir said. Worth it though. You really do look pretty dumb.”

Jean’s retort sounded at least partially like he didn’t really know what to say in response and kind of like he was pulling insults out of his ass. “Oh yeah dick-waggon? Well you’re no fucking stunner either, you fucking goddamn cock-sucker…”

“Christ Jean, now you’re being homophobic as well as misogynistic?” Ymir said, cackling again. She shook her head and looked at me. “What an ass, right Eren?”

Jean groaned and threw his head against the back of the couch. “I can’t be homophobic Ymir! I’m fucking gay as hell! You’re the one that just outed Eren to all of us by saying that! I didn’t fucking know he was gay before then. Cock-sucker just came out of nowhere.”

“She didn’t out Eren, dummy.” The smaller blond next to Jean gave him a condescending look. “Reiner pointed out your misogyny earlier with the girl comment, even though Eren’s not a girl. Just like that could be seen as homophobic whether Eren’s gay or not. You’re the one who just immediately thought he’s gay. And why would that be? Maybe Ymir’s right after all.”

Ymir’s grin widened and her next words were sung. “Sexual tension - yeah!”

“All that subconscious shit,” Huge-Blond - Reiner? - said, nodding like he actually understood what was going on. Marco and I both looked at each other in confusion, but let it play out instead of asking questions. 

“Reiner’s right,” Krista chimed in. “You subconsciously want him to be gay so that way you have a chance with him. Ymir’s got it pretty close I think. You’ve got some ridiculous sexual tension built up from this whole twitter-war.”

That was where I stopped letting it play out. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Marco seemed to get the point though, because he started laughing. “Oh shit. You guys picked up on that too?” he asked the Trost group. “We’ve been referring to Tooler as Eren’s boyfriend since the third day of this damned thing.”

Ymir roared with laughter. I scowled at Marco first, and then at the group of people on the screen in front of me. “I literally hate all of you.”

“Fucking same man,” Jean grumbled. He looked completely defeated, arms crossed over his chest, body sunk as low into the couch as possible, a look a dejection on his face. It stops being fun making fun of someone when they stop being a good sport about it. Jean was obviously bothered, even if his friends didn’t seem to notice, and I was having no part in it anymore.

“Oh come on, you both gotta know we’re only joking!” 

“Save it Ymir. I’m done with this right now. I’m out.” I stood up and left Marco’s room before anyone in that conversation could try to make me stay. 

Part of me wanted to go back to the living room and finish the movie with Sasha and Mikasa, but I knew I’d have to explain why it took me half the movie to check up on Marco, and I didn’t want to deal with that at the moment. They’d ask eventually, but I just didn’t have it in me to have them laugh about it all over again. So instead, I walked back to my room, grabbed my laptop, and laid down on my bed. 

I pulled up Scoot’s twitter account and stared at the icon that dotted the page and didn’t belong to me. I eventually clicked on it and then stared at Tooler’s page, half spacing out, my thoughts racing. I thought over everything that just happened and all the new information I just gained. And I thought about how I would never use any of that information against Tooler because he’s not Jean, just like Scoot’s not me. I thought about all the things he learned about me and how I was fairly sure he wouldn’t use that against Scoot either. But then I thought about something I felt an odd need to clear up, even though it really didn’t matter than he knew the truth. 

I sighed and opened up a DM from Scoot to Tooler. 

_btw i’m actually not gay. i prefer pansexual_

_also sorry our friends suck_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like simultaneously so much and also so little happened in this chapter.  
> But now we have Jean and Eren seeing each other as actual humans instead of their twitter personas, so that's a step forward. (Don't worry, there will still be lots of twitter fighting in the future; that won't stop anytime soon)  
> They're probably going to meet in person next chapter too, so look forward to that train wreck amirite?
> 
> Also I'm going to start replying to all your comments, because I realized I haven't done that and I want to. So if you've commented before, sorry I didn't reply, but I love hearing from you and thanks so much for commenting!!


	6. Six: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is split into two parts because I got really carried away and this would be insanely long if I didn't split it up like this. Thus the semi-cliffhanger.

Tooler the Tootan _@Toolerthetootan_  
furs wekend of simestur ! b saf yal

Tooler the Tootan _@Toolerthetootan_  
jk jk fukin PArti tooo dun 4git 2 tak an honrury shot fur ur fav macsot

Scoot the Scoot _@Scootthescoot_  
@Toolerthetootan dun wori i plan 2 tak all mi shot fur my fav macsst o waet das mi

Tooler the Tootan _@Toolerthetootan_  
@Scootthescoot hav fun wit ur stomik pumping fekin lite wait

Scoot the Scoot _@Scootthescoot_  
@Toolerthetootan ill fukin drnk u undur te tabl bro

Tooler the Tootan _@ Toolerthetootan_  
rt if u thnk @scootthescoot wud git his ass handid 2 him bi toolers drinkn skillz

**New Message(s) from Eren (1)**   
_-you wanna fucking bet bro?_

Almost a week after finding out who Scoot was, I still wasn’t used to that fact. Nor the part where we have each other’s phone numbers now and will occasionally communicate in real life as well as on Twitter. Doing both at the same time was even weirder, especially when we talked about the same thing in both cases. 

Getting Eren’s text seemingly out of nowhere, it took me almost a full minute to realize that he was talking about Tooler and Scoot’s conversation. Once I realized that, I let my head fall onto my desk, purely in disgust of how long it took me to figure that out. I shook my head and typed out a response. 

_-you’re coming to my house and you think you can out drink me? yeah right_

**New Message(s) from Eren (2)**   
_-what does that have to do with anything?  
-a light weight’s a light weight_

I smirked. Now there’s a challenge. 

_-oh you’re on bro_

A knock on my doorframe made my head jerk up and I saw Ymir leaning against it casually. She raised an eyebrow and nodded her chin towards my computer, which still had a chain of tweets on the screen. “Fighting a meme war with him isn’t enough; you gotta text him while doing it too?”

“You don’t know who I’m texting,” I defended. Poorly. 

“Who the hell else would you be texting?” She asked this as if I was an idiot for trying to argue the fact. “All of your friends are in this house right now, getting ready for the party.”

“I could be texting Marco.”

“Armin’s giving Marco directions currently. He wouldn’t be able to text you too.”

“I have other friends. I invited other people to this party too, y’know.” I huffed, still slightly annoyed at how she was still pushing this. And how right she actually was. 

“I’m sure that’s true,” she nodded. “But that doesn’t mean that you’re not sitting there talking to your boyfriend through both text and Twitter.”

My face immediately dropped into a frustrated expression I would categorize as ‘100% done’. I didn’t even have to say anything for her to throw her hands up and surrender. 

“Okay, sorry, my bad. I know we said we’d stop talking about you two like you’re totally flirting 24/7 and need to just screw already.”

My facial expression turned instantly to ‘200% done’. 

“And I won’t mention how tonight would be the perfect opportunity for you to do so. Or how -”

“Ymir!” I cut her off shortly. She stared at me then, one eyebrow raised. “What did you come here for?”

“It’s your party too y’know. Come help us get ready for it dammit.”

 

The first weekend of the semester was always one of the busiest weekends for parties throughout any college campus. Trost was no different, and the stars aligned perfectly that weekend for us to be able to throw our own party Saturday night. That day was the first football game of the season, so Reiner, who’s on the team himself, Connie, and I were busy with that all morning. It was an afternoon game and was done before 6pm, so it left us plenty of time to set up the house for a small rager. And by midnight, there were more people in our house than I ever would have thought possible. 

Marco and the rest of the Shiganshina crew arrived around 10 to help with the last minute details of the party, but we were mostly done by then, so we started drinking way before everyone else showed up. But the time people started ringing our doorbell, Armin had already scolded a half-drunk Connie from doing something reckless. Both he and I invited a lot of people from the band, Reiner invited a couple of his teammates, Armin invited a couple barista friends and a few classmates, and Ymir and Krista invited a lot of their art friends. As we knew would happen, all of those people brought other people with them as well. 

Armin had started out the party trying to play hostess, as if our guests really cared about much other than where the booze was. Just about all anyone let him do was direct them to the people that invited them and show them where the kitchen was, since that’s where the alcohol was being stored, so they could proceed with getting shitfaced. 

A little after one in the morning, Armin gave up trying to be the friendly host and retreated to the corner by the sound system, repeatedly scanning the room, probably just waiting for something to go wrong. He’d been talking with a friend of his from class when I’d spotted him, but he hadn’t moved from that spot in the following hour, even after his friend excused himself to talk with someone else she knew. When there was a break in the conversation I was having with some of my band friends, I excused myself and walked towards Armin. 

He saw me walking his way as his eyes passed over the room again and began talking before I even stopped moving. “Why did I agree to be the sober host again tonight? Remind me why I would willingly place myself in the flaming center of Hades.”

“Because you don’t drink,” I answered simply. 

“I’m about to talk. If it means I don’t have to do this ever again, that is.”

“Dude, you haven’t even moved from this spot in like an hour? How bad can it be?”

Armin’s head moved slowly, deliberately, as he met my eyes with the most threatening look I have ever seen on his face. “The reason I chose to stand here was because someone tried changing the song and almost disconnected the sounds system. Two girls holding up a third, far drunker, and heavily crying girl asked me if we had a hair dryer because their friend is an emotional drunk and started crying when she spilled water on herself and they wanted to dry it. And I’m currently - quite skeptically - trying to gauge just how drunk your stupid nemesis is getting and how much of a danger he poses. He likes picking things up, looking at them, and then dropping them on the floor when he’s done, no matter where he picked them up from. Marco has been pretty good at making sure he doesn’t pick up anything breakable so far, but I’ve lost track of him. I can still see Eren though.” He gestured towards the front window, which Eren was leaning against as he typed out something on his phone. “And I don’t know if I need to be worried about him or not.”

I chuckled and shook my head. “Would it make you feel more comfortable if I went over there and kept an eye on him?”

Armin raised an eyebrow. “Only if you two don’t start a fight or do anything that would make me have to intervene.”

“Cross my heart,”” I said, doing just that with my extended pinky finger. “We’ll be perfectly civil. Maybe even friendly. Who knows?”

Armin flinched, not at what I said, but at what he saw over my shoulder. “He’s on the move. Go go go! Intercept the destruction!”

I laughed again, turning around to look for a mop of dishwater brown hair bobbing through the crowd. Not exactly the easiest target to find in a massive crowd of drunk 20-somethings. I eventually spotted him, but only because about five people lunged out of his way as he tripped over his own feet on his way towards the hallway. I caught up with him right as he regained his balance and clapped him on the shoulder. I half hoped it would make him stumble again. It didn’t. 

“Hey ass-face, what happened to that whole drinking me under the table challenge?”

Eren’s eyes narrowed slightly as he realized who was talking to him. He looked at the bottle in my hand, only half full, and snorted. “You had the same drink in your hand since we started drinking. You’re nowhere near my level right now buster.” His words were only slurring slightly, so I was starting to think that his clumsiness might not have been an indication of his drunkenness afterall. 

“It’s my third bottle; just the same stuff all night,” I explained. 

“And this,” he said, holding out his red plastic cup for me to see, “is my fourth. They been like a quarter straight vodka too. Get on my level bro. Then we’ll see who drinks who under what table.”

I laughed, my head falling back a bit. “I said it earlier and I’ll say it again; you’re on bro.” I cocked my head towards the kitchen and Eren, getting the idea, followed me there. Marco was standing at the counter where all the alcohol was, a gaggle of people I only vaguely knew surrounding him, apparently waiting for the drinks he was making them. 

“You best not poison any of our guests Marco,” I said sarcastically, reaching around him for a bottle of Absolut. I took a long swig right out of the bottle, chased it down with a gulp from my other drink, and raised a challenging eyebrow to Eren. 

He was about to say something in response but Marco cut him off over his shoulder. “It’s like you forget that I’m an actual bartender, Jean. You like cinnamon? Eren?” His question threw me off but I answered yes anyways. Eren hummed an affirmation as well. “Sweet. I’m making you guys a shot too.”

It looked like he was almost done with the other shots, but he lined up two more shot glasses and started pouring different amounts from three bottles into them. He then gave all of us a short set of instructions, which intrigued me. I’d never taken a shot that came with instructions before, let alone where the last thing was to blow something out. He then took out a stick lighter and a bottle of cinnamon, dragging the flame across the crown of the shots, which caught and created licking flames on top of the liquid roughly two inches high. Marco sprinkled cinnamon across the fresh flames, which set off multicolored sparkles in the flames. 

“Fuck yes,” I laughed, reaching for a shot. Marco had told us to quickly blow out the flames, which I did before tipping it back down my throat. It burned all the way down in just about every sense of the word. I shook my head instinctively at the burn of the alcohol and turned to Marco, who was patting the back of one of Ymir’s friends that apparently didn’t take the shot too well. 

I heard Eren chuckle something that sounded suspiciously like ‘n00b’ and turned to look at him judgingly. He noticed me looking at me and hit my shoulder playfully. “Marco’s a pretty bitchin’ bartender, right?”

“Damn straight.”

Marco snorted as he handed the coughing kid a cup of water. “Something you’re not.” Most of the other people in the kitchen topped of their larger drinks and flowed back into the main part of the party. 

I glared at Marco. “Hah. Funny. Fuck you Marco.”

“Been there. Don’t particularly wanna go back there.” The poor kid next to him started choking on his water and scurried out of the kitchen. 

I laughed, at him and Marco both. “Like I do?” That summer of exploration for the two of us had never exactly been a secret, and we joked about it all the time, but since our friend groups didn’t intersect almost ever, Ymir and Armin were probably the only two that knew about it. Connie had probably heard us talk about it before, but I couldn’t be too sure that he’d ever figured it out. Eren, however, made it known very quickly that he’d never heard about it. 

“Wait, you two have fucked before? Where the hell was I?”

“What, wanna threesome or something?” Marco asked snarkily, throwing an arm over my shoulder and making fake kissy noises right by my ear. I was snorting slightly around the bottle at my mouth and attempted to shrug Marco off of me. 

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Eren grumbled. 

Marco chuckled and finally removed his arm, only to place it around Eren’s shoulders instead. “Jean-bo helped me realize I liked boys the summer before high school. Helped me realize a lot of things I like, if you get my gist.” I snorted again at the look of terror on Eren’s face. “And then a girl named Hitch freshman year helped me realize I liked a lot of the same kind of things with girls too.” I finished the drink I’d been nursing when I intercepted Eren in the first place and replaced it with the bottle of vodka again. “Imagine the look of surprise on her face when I told her I wanted -”

“Ohhh-kaayy,” I interrupted loudly for Eren’s sake. I knew what was about to come out of Marco’s mouth - we’d had a nice laugh about that event when it happened - but I was pretty sure Eren didn’t want anything to do with learning about Marco’s sexual awakening. “Eren, let’s go dance. If I’m getting on your level any time soon, I need to get significantly drunker faster.” I took a long drink from the bottle of vodka to show my point and tried not to laugh too hard as Eren shook Marco off of him. 

Eren smirked back at me. “Dancing won’t make you more drunk Jean.”

“But the alcohol I’m ingesting now needs time to fully take effect. Therefore, we dance and wait it out.”

He laughed, grabbing my hand with his free one, leading us into the middle of chaos. “Yeah, if you’re still talking like that, you definitely need t’get drunker.”

“I mean, you don’t sound that drunk either,” I countered, taking another drink. I really did love the burn of vodka, or at least good vodka. I only started with those bottled mixed drink things because I wanted to pace myself. At that point, dancing with Eren and attempting to prove a point, pacing myself went right out the window. I held out the bottle to him and said, “You’re just kinda acting drunkish. Armin was starting to worry about you breaking something.” 

He took the vodka from me and poured more into his cup before handing the bottle back. “Yeah,” he laughed, taking a drink. “I’ll break your ego when we prove what a lightweight you are.” Eren’s hips were already moving in time to the heavy beat of the song in the background, and he was actually moving so effortlessly that I wondered for a moment if he’d even meant to do it. 

I started moving my own body along to the music. “Says the man drinking a cocktail to the man drinking straight vodka. Okay,” I laughed sarcastically. It really was just too fun messing with him, on or off Twitter. 

He laughed back and took the bottle from me again, pouring even more into his cup. It had to be at least three-quarters vodka by the time he handed the bottle back. His eyes crinkled in a slight grimace as he took a long drink and shook his head to get rid of the taste. “Are we gonna dance ’r what?” 

Even then, the alcohol was started to take more of an effect on me, and I felt myself loosening up significantly, becoming much more susceptible to the uptempo music. For a few songs, Eren and I just danced by ourselves, near enough to share the vodka bottle once Eren finished his drink and threw it on the floor. A few people we knew came to dance with us for a bit, including the very drunk pair of new friends, Connie and Sasha. We were just having a nice time dancing there for a while, joking with each other and with other friends, but for some reason, the drunker we got, the raunchier the music became. Or maybe it was just our dancing that became raunchier; it was hard to tell the reality through the drunken haze. I lost the bottle of Absolut at one point, but it was okay because I’m pretty sure it was empty by then. 

The whole game changed when a really well-mixed, very danceable song came over the speakers. All of a sudden, I had Eren _right_ in front of me, his hands on my hips, and I could feel his hot skin on mine as our legs tangled together. Marco - or maybe Ymir? They’ve always had very similar cackles - walked by at some point during that song, but I wasn’t anywhere near in the right mind to be bothered by their amusement. 

Even once that song faded into a much less dirty one, Eren’s hands didn’t leave my hips and mine, for lack of other things to do, make their way to his hips as well. My intoxicated mind was going in twenty different directions, but the steady beating of Eren’s heart against my chest and the gyrations of his hips grounded me. The two of us were practically attempting to absorb ourselves into one being out on that makeshift dancefloor. The only way we could have been any closer to each other was if we were kissing. Or, well...fucking I suppose would be the _closest_ we could get. But we were still clothed and very much in public, so the closest we could have gotten was through kissing. 

Those were the thoughts that ran through my drunken mental haze at the time, only much less coherent and more rambling. That, and of course how I shouldn’t have been thinking of kissing him. If I’d thought about kissing him and we were already grinding against each other like we were, then it was very likely that I would have actually kissed him. I knew this, even then, so I thought about how I shouldn’t be thinking about it. I thought about not kissing him. But I also thought about how nice it would be to kiss him. And I thought about what it would be like if I did kiss him. I started leaning forward as if I were _about_ to kiss him. I stopped, but he still noticed and stopped dancing. We made eye contact and I tried reading his expression. Before I could figure out what he was thinking, he stepped away and asked, “Bathroom’s at the end o’the hall, yeah?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I nodded and watched him disappear into the thick crowd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo the next part will be up within the next couple of days. Maybe even tomorrow. And boy are we in for a treat because even I wasn't exactly expecting what happened in the next part. Like, I knew it was gonna happen, but it wasn't supposed to happen there. Whoops. 
> 
> Side note: Not sure why I haven't done this before, but hey! If you wanna follow my trashcan of a blog, my tumblr is [smollminyyard](http://smollminyyard.tumblr.com)  
> Also, I made a [photoset](http://smollminyyard.tumblr.com/post/143605287569/okay-seriously-you-are-being-a-massive-fuckhead) for this story because I like to spend the little free time I have editing pictures and creating fake tweets (that ended up being wrong anyways lol) in public spaces where I hope no one looks at me funny for it. So go on and spread that bad boy around if you like. (side side note: the cosplayer i chose for Eren in this photoset saw it and reblogged it and I think I screamed a little when I saw that)


	7. Six: Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the (beginning of the) reason the rating on this story was recently upped.

_’Great, now he really does hate me. Not just Tooler now. Me too. Dammit. Why couldn’t I have just not thought about it? I wouldn’t have tried if I hadn’t thought about kissing his stupid face and he wouldn’t have freaked out like that. Why am I such a drunk dumb...shit, drum du- dumb drunk dammit Jean get it together.’_

I was pissed at myself and probably on the verge of making an awkward scene, so I made my way down the hall to my room. The door was locked to prevent anyone trying to use it for any illicit doings, but that also meant that my drunken ass had a hard time unlocking it. It probably didn’t help that we’d never tried locking our bedroom doors until that night and it was a fairly old house to begin with. I struggled my way through, however, and made it into the room right as the bathroom door next to me opened. I all but fell into my room trying to avoid Eren and only narrowly succeeded in doing so. I heard his footsteps pass down the hall as I slowly shut my door. It clicked into place and I launched myself onto my bed face first, groaning. 

My brain circled through like five trains of thought, all of them revolving around Eren. The one that won out was about our Twitter personas, however, which was a welcome distraction from reality. Even in my drunken state, I was still curious about the responses we may have gotten to our earlier challenge to each other. 

I propped myself up by my elbows and pulled my phone out of my pocket to open Twitter. I was greeted by tons of retweets and a good amount of responses as well, though most of those seemed to be kids from Shig backing up Scoot’s claims of drinking me under the table. When I went to Scoot’s feed, I saw a lot of similar things from Trost kids. I also saw what seemed to be his semi-drunken tweets from earlier in the night. 

Scoot the Scoot _@Scootthescoot_  
sccouten 4 dat booty lik an gud shig scoot shud

Scoot the Scoot _@Scootthescoot_  
scoutibg fur booty … .. scootinh if u wul

Scoot the Scoot _@Scootthescoot_  
boooty scoootingg loooll

I snorted. “Booty scooting. What a fucking nerd,” I mumbled. I shook my head and continued reading through his feed for a bit until I felt my phone vibrate in my hands. A text notification flashed across the top of the screen. When I clicked on it, I saw that I had an attachment from Eren. It was a picture of someone lying on a bed face down, zoomed in on their butt, with the caption, “found the booty”. I was about to respond, “good for you?” when I realized that I was looking at a picture of my own ass taken from my doorway. Flipping around to look that way, I saw Eren with a smirk on his face. 

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he explained, shrugging as he took a couple steps into my room. He closed the door behind him as I sat up. 

I crossed my arms defensively across my chest. “Y’know, I don’t really ‘preciate bein’ mocked.”

His face fell. “Mocked? Wha - oh shit. No, Jean...damn. That’s not what that was.” He sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair. “It totally looked like I freaked out ‘n’ rejected you back there don’t it? Shit.”

The question was rhetorical but I answered it anyways. I was still too drunk, although fading fast, to care about that. “Yeah. Kinda did. Looked kinda ‘xactly like that.”

“It’s not that I didn’t wanna kiss you Jean,” he started, crossing his arms over his chest as well and leaning against the wall by my door. The way he said my name, all soft and syrupy from the alcohol, sent a completely involuntary shiver down my back and I hated myself for it. “We’re jus - I mean, I know ‘m drunk and I’m pretty sure you’re probs drunk too since you had, like, waayy more vodka than me. And I jus...I don’t wanna...we might regret it. One of us might not be happy ‘bout it in the mornin’ and I don’t wanna ruin whatever this frien’ship thing we got starting on right now.”

I uncrossed my arms and shook my head. “Marco and I used to have sex and it don’t effect our friendship. Never has. We did lotsa shit that summer without any feelings or anything getting in the way. We were jus’ friends that made out a bunch and had sex and did stuff in between too.” I knew I was rambling, but was still too far gone to care. I shifted so I was sitting cross legged and gestured between us awkwardly. “We could do that kinda thing too. Y’know, if you wanted to and stuff. We wouldn’t havta worry ‘bout feelings or anything that way. None of that ‘what does this mean for us now’ kinda bullshit. And look, if feelings do start gettin’ in the way, we can be adults about it, right? It doesn’t have to be a problem.”

Eren stood there, leaning on the wall and staring into my soul - or so it felt like - for a solid minute after I stopped talking. Slowly, a sly smile worked its way onto his face and he laughed; a deep throaty sound that went straight to my dick. “You _really_ wanna kiss me, don’t you?”

“In my defense,” I started strongly, shifting my weight again. “I always get pretty frisky when I drink alota vodka. Prolly shoulda warned you, to be honest. But really, even sober me would totally be down with what I mentioned. You’re definitely fucking attractive. Plus, you like my butt at the very least.”

“In my defense,” he countered with a smirk. “Those shorts you’re wearing are a little on the short side and also just fit you super great. So I think about everyone had noticed your butt tonight.”

I smirked back at him, my ego inflating at the compliment. “You, but you’re the one ‘scouting for the booty’ tonight.”

Eren laughed that throaty laugh again and kicked himself off the wall to start towards me. “And like I said, I found it.”

Eren stopped with his knees against mine and just looked down at me. My legs itched for me to uncross them, but I didn’t want to kick him, so I didn’t move except to tilt my head towards his. “Are you - I mean...is this like flirting or something? Or am I just missing something?” 

“I don’t know about you, but kissing...and, y’know, other stuff,” he said, winking, “sure would be more fun with some flirting thrown in.”

I stared at him for a second before finding my words again. “Are you saying yes to the no-str - “

“Ew, don’t call it that,” he grimaced. “No-strings-attached sounds like some shitty rom-com thing. Same with friends-with-benefits, ugh. None of that.”

“Well those are like the only ways to describe it. Because there’s now way I’m callin’ you my fuck-buddy. So what do you suggest we call this?”

Eren smirked, leaning down so our foreheads touched. “How ‘bout we don’t call it anything and just _do_ it?” I raised my eyebrow at his wording, which he probably felt more than he even saw. It did cause some of his confidence to go out the window though. He pulled his face away from mine as a fierce blush crept across his cheeks. When he spoke again, he almost sounded even drunker. “I mean, like - do this thing, not like do the...do. Like let’s do the whole not-putting-a-name-to-it thing. I mean, we _can_ do the… _that_ too, but we don’t have to - I just mean - “

I was laughing at him but he hadn’t seemed to notice, so I tugged at the front of his tank top to bring him back down to my level. He looked almost as shocked at the once-again closeness of our faces, as if I hadn’t just propositioned him two minutes before and his forehead wasn’t just pressed against my own. I cocked an eyebrow again and started to ask if what I was doing was okay, but he cut me off by pushing his lips against mine. 

I hummed a short chuckled against his mouth as he forgot about his panic. This kiss itself was about half a drunken mess, but at the time it was great. Feeling the heat of Eren’s body against my own, his lips sliding over mine as I grabbed onto his hips to steady myself. Whether he was losing his own balance or pushing on purpose, he ended up toppling us over, which was awkward for a second due to my crossed legs. We got straightened out, laughing at ourselves in the process, and resumed kissing.

Before I knew it, I was tugging at Eren’s tank top while he fumbled with the buttons on my shirt, and we shifted so I was actually laying with my head on the pillows. I didn’t even have time to think about what would come next before Eren was kissing down my chest, his hands groping at my ass through my shorts. My breaths were shallow and my hands grasped the pillow on either side of my head as I watched that mop of dark hair travel lower. 

With the alcohol in my system mixed with all the sensations I was feeling, my brain was clouded in a thick haze, only getting thicker. So thick, in fact, that I barely registered my shorts coming off until I felt a heavy hand on my abdomen and looked down to see Eren looking up at me with those normally bright eyes, dark with lust, as if he was waiting for my signal before continuing. I just let out a shaky breath and nodded my head quickly. The thick haze was back as soon as he took me into his mouth and my head fell back against the pillows with low moan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that happened.   
> This was supposed to be a much slower burn, but damn, I think I like this route waaayy better anyways. 
> 
> Future smutty scenes will be much smuttier, I promise (warn?). The rating is likely to go even higher soon. I mean, how long can you maintain a Not-fuckbuddy situation without some, y'know, fucking? Not very long.


End file.
